Fact Check: Old Image of a man staring at his home being bulldozed falsely linked to Haryana

Hyderabad: Social media users are sharing an image claiming that it shows the ongoing demolition drive in Haryana post-violence.

In the viral image, you can see a Muslim man wearing a skullcap helplessly witnessing his home being demolished by a JCB. The act has been claimed to be by the government.

The caption of the post reads, “A helpless Muslim man from Nuh, Haryana watching his home's demolition by government.”

In the backdrop of the demolition drive in violence-hit Nuh was in no way “ethnic cleansing”. On 4th August 2023, the Haryana government informed the Punjab and Haryana High Court that it was carried out after following proper procedure.

The high court, taking suo motu cognizance of some news reports, on 7th August 2023 halted the demolition of allegedly “illegally-constructed” buildings in the Muslim-dominated Nuh. It questioned if a particular community was being targeted after communal violence broke out on July 31.

While the demolitions did take place, does this image belong to the same spot? Let’s find out.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim to be false. The viral image is a year old and unrelated to the Nuh violence.

Upon performing a reverse image search, we first found the viral image compiled in a YouTube video on the official YouTube channel of ‘Islam channel’ titled 'Demolition of 4,000 Muslim homes blocked by India's supreme court' dated 6th January 2023. The video was uploaded in the context of India's Supreme Court’s stay order on the mass demolition of over 4000 homes in the hill state of Uttarakhand.

Moving forward with the same search, we found the viral image on a Palestinian media outlet titled “Indian Ulema Organization Petitions Against Destroying Muslim Homes” dated 18th April 2022 again but with another context.

“The Muslim organization Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind has filed a petition in India's Supreme Court against the use of bulldozers to raze homes and other buildings in states ruled by the BJP, the governing Hindu nationalist party,” the report said.

“It stated that in the case in the city of Khargone, Madhya Pradesh, which coincided with the celebration of Ram Navami for Hindus, “the rioting started with the shouting of very provocative slogans and then by order of the state government, Muslim houses, and shops were destroyed. On the other hand, the Madhya Pradesh government is defending its heinous act.”

Moreover, on performing a keyword search, we again found a similar report on Indian media outlets carrying the same image. We also found the same image on a media report by scroll as well but with a different incident in Khargone, Madhya Pradesh.

Similar reports could be seen on Hindutva Watch and The Free Press Journal as well.

We could not find the exact incident from where the image was taken. Through our investigation, we found that the viral image has been used multiple times to show demolitions in past incidents as well.

With this, it is evident that the viral image does not show the demolition drive in Nuh as the images are old and unrelated.